


Ungoodthinker

by Lavanya_Six



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Character Interpretation, Angst, Female Characters, Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Mother-Son Relationship, One Shot, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-04
Updated: 2011-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-14 09:57:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/148041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavanya_Six/pseuds/Lavanya_Six
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his father mutilates him, a ruthless opportunist seizes power in the Fire Nation by any means necessary. Not an AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ungoodthinker

The war was over, the government proclaimed, but it wasn't the ending that anyone in the colonies had expected.

Ba Sing Se had fallen to a multinational force supposedly led by _General Iroh_ and Omashu's Mad King. The Fire Nation's sprawling occupation army, filled with conscripts from every corner of the empire, had been captured as prisoners of war.

Prince Zuko had defeated his sister in agni kai and won the throne. He'd pledged to restore the Fire Nation's honor and, with the Avatar's help, user in a new era of love and peace.

Fire Lord Ozai, they said, had declared himself the 'Phoenix King' and tried to burn down the entire Earth Kingdom. The Avatar had spared his life, somehow taking his firebending away.

Taking Ursa's breath away was more like what it did, but that was why the biggest lies were the best. You could hardly believe anyone would be so brazen a liar, so your mind began to unwilling wonder if the lie might actually be the truth.

But she hadn't survived in the royal court without appreciating how history could be re-written. Keeping two contrary facts in one's head was a necessity in the Fire Nation's upper echelon. The Air Nation and the Air Nomads. The savage sky horde and the pacifistic monks. Ennobling the lesser races by raping and pillaging their lands. Her own grandfather, worshipped by the Fire Sages in one breath and damned as a traitor in the next.

The government was already at work supporting its new master. Now it was _Azula_ alone who had masterminded the conquest of Ba Sing Se, but even that triumph had apparently been possible only with the aid of Earth Kingdom traitors. Now it was _Azula_ who had almost succeeded in killing the Avatar. Fire Lord Zuko, they said, hadn't been involved in the coup's planning at all. He'd just been an innocent refugee seeking shelter in the capital city of his country's greatest enemy.

Every success that Prince Zuko had claimed under Fire Lord Ozai was now, according to the new government, a crime committed by Princess Azula.

Azula, who wasn't chained in some prison but, in an unfathomable display of compassion by Fire Lord Zuko, had instead been committed to a mental hospital after going insane in the last days of the war.

Ursa laughed not to cry.

It was like her village. Ilah's Hearth was nestled deep in the bosom of the Fire Nation colonies. Ursa had never visited it before Ozai had secreted her away there under house arrest, but she hadn't needed to. Its history was laid out for anyone to see: immaculately terraced rice patties farmed by peasants garbed in crimson shades. Fire folk working land that could only have been sculpted over countless generations by earthbenders that were nowhere to be seen.

Ursa knew in her bones how the Fire Nation worked. The awful truth of what had happened at the war's end was just as plain to see if you bothered looking.

Knowing it had been his only way to regain his position as Crown Prince following his exile for cowardliness, Zuko had scoured the world for the Avatar. Then, against all odds, Zuko had found and killed the last airbender in Ba Sing Se.

Or so everyone had thought, at least. Zuko must have believed he'd succeeded for some time. Ursa wondered when it was that the truth had come out. Not until the end, she suspected. Her husband would never have tolerated such a revelation.

Ursa could see how it must have happened: the Avatar's return exposed as his invasion force was shattered on the Day of Black Sun. Their hope of cutting off the snake's head was gone, just as was any hope of Zuko in maintaining his position as Crown Prince. His honor hadn't been restored if the Avatar still lived. So Zuko had fled the capital. He'd tracked down the Avatar again but, knowing that Ozai would never accept him back, had instead cut a deal.

In exchange for helping the Avatar master firebending and win the war, he would be crowned Fire Lord. Conquest from above. Why fight remnant armies and endless successors to the throne when you could put your own puppet in charge?

And Azula... her little girl... would only be remembered by history as a madwoman. Because what better way to fracture your opposition while securing your own power base then by painting the person best suited to replacing you as being crazy?

Ursa remembered her son being so confused about why his father had paid all his attention to Azula instead of him. Even now, her heart clenched at the memory of Zuko's frustrated tears. She had loved him so much, would have done anything to take that pain away, to protect him. She had committed the highest treason possible to save her son from his father's hunger for power.

And now...

Now Zuko had destroyed his own family in order to steal the throne from his father's favored heir.

Ursa had given birth to another Ozai.

Her son was a _monster_.


End file.
